A dataset is a collection of data that relates to a topic or thing. Generally, the dataset has data attributes that describe the collection of data. The data attributes are related to each other and related to the topic or thing of the dataset. For example, a business dataset for a set of oil wells may contain a set of attributes for a lease for land on which the oil wells are located or for oil well production statistics.
Geographic information system (GIS) products provide geographic information, such as maps or other geographic data, based on some input. With most GIS products, if you want to relate data from multiple disparate datasets to geographic data you must permanently merge the data from the disparate datasets with the geographic data. However, this requires that the data be replicated. In some cases, the data may require conversion prior to replication.
Other GIS products provide the ability to join or associate one or more datasets with geographic data, but only as long as the datasets are in the same database in which the geographic data is housed. Thus, new systems and methods are needed to enable linking different datasets with spatial data without replicating the datasets and to enable a user to access the datasets spatially.